It is the current practice when packaging many types of tablets, such as aspirin or vitamins, to place a wad of cotton in the headspace of the container, before application of the container closure, to keep the tablets from moving during handling and shipment. There can be problems associated with sterility of the cotton and bleach used to whiten the cotton. It is a general object of the present disclosure to provide a hold-down device that eliminates any requirement for this addition of cotton during the packaging process. Another and related object of the present invention is to provide a package for tablet products that contains such a device, and a method of packaging tablet products, that are amenable to implementation in automatic packaging equipment.
A package for tablet products in accordance with presently preferred embodiments of the invention includes a container having an interior volume for holding the tablet products and a closure secured to a cylindrical finish of the container. A product hold-down device has an axially resilient central portion, a lower portion for engaging the upper surface of the product within the container, and an upper portion for securement within the container finish to hold the device in place within the finish, with the closure removed from the finish, against the axially resilient forces applied to the device by engagement of the lower portion with product in the container and resilient compression of the central portion of the device. Thus, the hold-down device can be inserted into the container and secured to the container using automatic packaging equipment, and the container closure then applied to the container. In use, the closure is removed from the container, and the device is removed and discarded by the user to obtain access to the tablet product.
In the preferred embodiments of the invention, the container finish has an internal bead or channel, and the upper portion of the device is in the form of an annular ring received by snap fit within the finish beneath the bead or within the channel. The lower portion of the device comprises a plurality of radially extending petals, preferably projecting radially from a flat central disk. The mid portion of the device is in the form of an axially compressible spring. This mid portion may take the form of circumferentially staggered coil or spiral springs, or an axially compressible lattice-like structure. In other preferred embodiments of the invention, the hold-down device takes the form of a spiral spring having an upper portion in radial compression within the container finish.